Water from new dam is not 'extra' supply

Infrequent rain has not only made the civic body wary about the situation of water stock, compelling it to go ahead with the cloud seeding experiment, but it has also crippled the civic body's plans of providing additional water to the city from the newly-built Middle Vaitarna dam. Poorvi Kulkarni reports.

Infrequent rain has not only made the civic body wary about the situation of water stock, compelling it to go ahead with the cloud seeding experiment, but it has also crippled the civic body's plans of providing additional water to the city from the newly-built Middle Vaitarna dam.

Since the remaining lakes are running low on water stock, around 200 million litres of water to be released from Middle Vaitarna after the monsoon would be utilised to fulfil the city's normative water supply, thereby failing to make any impact towards reducing the water deficit in the city this year.

This means that the city's wait to reap benefits from one of the major water supply projects is likely to continue.

"Barring Modak Sagar, none of the lakes have filled up this year as expected. Hence, water released from Middle Vaitarna, cannot be reckoned as adding to the current supply," said Anil Tawadia, deputy hydraulic engineer, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC).

The city currently faces a water deficit of 770 million litres, with its demand being 4200 million litres per day against the daily supply of 3430 milion litres that it receives from the civic body.

The available water stock as on Monday, including water stored in the Middle Vaitarna dam, stood at 8.5 lakh million litres. With a total of 12.5 lakh million litres of water required by the end of monsoon, this means that the lakes have been replenished with only 60% of the requisite water stock.

On the eve of completion of the construction of the Middle Vaitarna dam in May, the BMC had promised an additional supply of 455 million litres of water to the city from September this year.

However, incomplete reconstruction of a bridge by the state public works department near the dam has forced the civic body to cut the water supply from the dam to half.